I’m posting this today to communicate a few of the changes coming to PAYDAY 2. Most of you don’t know me, and that’s how it should be. The day to day interactions you have with our OVERKILL devs, community managers and moderator crew are by far more interesting, I’m sure. Our team, together with you, provide a forum where firsthand input can be discussed, and these are dialogues that directly affect our current and future development. I took over the helm in December of last year (for the second time). I see myself primarily as the custodian, facilitator of making great games. If you look at a company as a well-oiled machine; every cog in the engine is more important than I. I’m just here to make sure everything’s clean, oiled, and running smoothly. My job is to create an environment where the team can focus on what’s important, the game(s). As many of you may or may not know, our company has gone through something of a purgatory fire in the past year. Because of this, we’re announcing a few PAYDAY 2 changes today. I’ll summarize them here in a TL;DR right here at the top, and then dive into the details:

Last year PAYDAY 2 development was stopped. Having reconsidered our future, I’ve asked the OVERKILL crew to resume production on PAYDAY 2. The game will have more updates going forward, both paid and free.

The team is working hard on the first new update, I will let the team present it soon™, but you can get a sneak peek here.

We’re re-introducing the DLC smörgåsbord again. An à la carte option of previous legacy content DLCs will be made available again starting today!

As a part of our journey into the future, we’ll be changing the PAYDAY 2: Ultimate Edition to PAYDAY 2: Legacy Collection starting later today. We want to be able to move forward together with all of you in our community, and to be able to do this we need to retire the promise of free future content based on old assumptions (more below).

New curated bundles on existing content will be created to give great offers to new and returning players.

PrefaceIn the beginning of this wall of text, I mentioned the purgatory fire that we’ve been through in the past months, and challenges we’re still facing. To keep it relevant and not too lengthy, I’ll condense some of the background to this here, most of the details can be found on our website if you’d like to learn more.

Late 2018 Starbreeze found itself in an acute liquidity shortfall (fancy words for: “we were urgently really out of cash”). In December of 2018, Starbreeze entered into “reconstruction”, a procedure similar to the US version of Chapter 11. On December 3rd, we only had projected cash reserves to run the company until mid-January 2019. This was how serious the situation had become. Since then we’ve been able, through extremely hard work and commitment by all of our employees, been able to stay afloat, clean up our business and start thinking about our future and the future of PAYDAY. We’re not entirely there yet, but we are starting to look ahead at what’s next. This brings me to the changes we’re making.

PAYDAY 2: Legacy Collection & À la carteTo get it out of the door immediately; yes, I know we’re breaking a promise. We do not do so with ease or take this lightly.

At one point in time, our company believed that the interest and engagement in PAYDAY 2 would decline over time, as new internal games were released. Resources were needed on new projects and production of PAYDAY 2 was scheduled to stop and no more updates to come. By popular demand this deadline was extended a few times, but development on PAYDAY 2 ultimately shut down December 2018.

It was also believed that the sheer amount of six years of DLC-releases was confusing for returning or new players and a blocker for people to get into the game. At the same time, getting the game with all of its content, was coming in above 200 USD, a respectable sum for any game. Hence, PAYDAY 2: Ultimate Edition was born as a packaged deal. It was basically the promise of “get everything PAYDAY 2 in a package, until we release the next installment of PAYDAY”.

Now we’re breaking the Ultimate Edition promise of forever-free-content. The reasoning for this is plain and simple:

We want to move forward and make more of PAYDAY 2, and to do so we need your support to continue producing content. New DLCs will be a mix of paid and free updates.

Enter The PAYDAY 2: Legacy Collection!The Ultimate Edition will be retired today, but PAYDAY 2: Legacy Collection will immediately replace it. This will still be the best offer on anything released 2018 or earlier. Also:

À la carte is back on the table!I’ve had reports from our team that the smörgåsbord, or à la carte option, to be able to purchase DLC separately, is very much requested; I’m happy to announce that we’re making individual DLC available again starting later today. The prices for the individual DLCs will remain as stated as the original price in the bundles.

More Payday 2!What about the next content drop for PAYDAY 2? Be patient with our team please. They’re working hard to deliver the next PAYDAY 2 update and will present it in all its glory, sneak peek here!

I wonder how they're gonna do it. Is the new dlc is going to be a prequel? The achievement names sound like Locke talking and they say "it's time we get BACK to work" so that sounds like the crew is getting back together but that wouldn't work with how the game ended. Then again, it's ovk so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I will say though that the response from various communities has been surprising.

Like, I expected reddit to be pissed because they were the driving force behind the shitstorm that the Black Market update became, but for the most part, they were very understanding about the situation and are excited to have new content.

And I expected Steam to be pretty happy about it because Steam's population is much broader and I don't expect them to follow all of Overkill's missteps as closely, but they were pretty upset about rescinding the no-paid-DLC deal. Lot of people mad that they bought the now-called Legacy pack 'cause they were told they were getting all clowntown DLC forever and ever.

And I expected tumblr to be excited too because they're here for the story and they're gonna get more, but they are wearily disinterested. From what I've seen, they feel the story is DONE and should remain so.

For my part, I am almost always of the opinion that wishing for a sequel for a game in this vein (by which I mean, games where they can add more content to what they have, games as a service) is foolish unless there's a very good reason to do so. Everyone always wants Team Fortress 3, but why? What could a new installment give us that couldn't merely be added on to TF2? Left 4 Dead 3 only makes sense if you want a new team of survivors. Otherwise, just make more levels for 2.

PAYDAY though? PAYDAY is one of the few cases where it'll be worth it. They desperately need to get off Diesel. Hopefully new DLC for 2 will allow them to fund clowntown trois.